What could be more bizarre than an early morning TV discussion program and phone-in about where the capital of the country is located? Except, that is, the present government policy, inherited from 50 years of KMT misrule, of placing it in another country.
What prompts these musings is Premier Yu Shyi-kun's response on Friday to DPP Legislator Cho Jung-tai (
Of course, Chen is unlikely to do any of this, and we can't help but wonder whether this doesn't in itself focus on a fundamental oversight of Chen's government, which is that so much time has been spent on futile political battles when so much could have been done administratively to change Taiwan's cultural agenda. A complete housecleaning of the education curriculum to get rid of reunificationist fantasy would be a start. Why, as Trong Chai (
This problem with the high-school curriculum is simply indicative of a wider failing of the DPP's vision, namely its lack of a revolutionary ideology. We do not mean of course that the DPP should have adopted some bizarre political agenda such as Maoism. What we do mean is that it needed to have a more dynamic vision of what change outside the merely political was necessary in Taiwan. A state contains more than political institutions. One of the strongest parts of any society are the social institutions that work to propagate the ideology of the ruling class -- what Louis Althusser has called "ideological state apparatuses," which include the media, educational, cultural and religious institutions. The KMT -- which, incidentally, does, or did, have a revolutionary background and as a result understood the importance of these things -- has monopolized these apparatuses for half a century to disseminate the colonial KMT's version of Taiwan's history and culture. And to a great extent it, along with its "blue camp" fellow travellers, still does.
The problem here is that this means that the DPP is always having to argue its cause in a debate framed by the assumptions of its enemies, since these are the assumptions of Taiwan in general. In not wanting to rock the boat, perhaps, because of its origins, not understanding how the boat needed to be rocked, the DPP has left far too much of this status quo in place.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
In an article published on this page on Tuesday, Kaohsiung-based journalist Julien Oeuillet wrote that “legions of people worldwide would care if a disaster occurred in South Korea or Japan, but the same people would not bat an eyelid if Taiwan disappeared.” That is quite a statement. We are constantly reading about the importance of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), hailed in Taiwan as the nation’s “silicon shield” protecting it from hostile foreign forces such as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and so crucial to the global supply chain for semiconductors that its loss would cost the global economy US$1
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
Sasha B. Chhabra’s column (“Michelle Yeoh should no longer be welcome,” March 26, page 8) lamented an Instagram post by renowned actress Michelle Yeoh (楊紫瓊) about her recent visit to “Taipei, China.” It is Chhabra’s opinion that, in response to parroting Beijing’s propaganda about the status of Taiwan, Yeoh should be banned from entering this nation and her films cut off from funding by government-backed agencies, as well as disqualified from competing in the Golden Horse Awards. She and other celebrities, he wrote, must be made to understand “that there are consequences for their actions if they become political pawns of